Ghost of Tsushima is the PS4's last big honk, its final big platform exclusive, discharging into our laps a month or so after the penultimate big platform exclusive, The Last of Us Part 2.
To say I enjoyed TLoU2 would be an understatement. It would also be inaccurate. I mean, it's the most miserable video game ever made. I don't think anybody could actually enjoy that amount of relentless anguish and anxiety. It was like being strapped into a gnarly chair, with your eyes forced open by a couple of uncomfortable metal hooks, while Twitter scrolls in front of you on a big screen.
Also: the room is full of hungry rats. And you're not wearing shoes or trousers.
It probably didn't help that I binged it in three days, by the end of which I emerged bow-legged from its unrelenting emotional pounding. That isn't a criticism; it just shows you how effective The Last of Us 2 was at making me feel stuff. In my view, there's no doubt it's one of the greatest video games ever made, its lustre dimmed only by the radicalism of bigots.
While I accept it may have driven its development team to near collapse, it doesn't so much raise the bar for the right way to achieve video game storytelling and characterisation as strap it to a rocket it and fire it into the moon.
Tsushima, therefore, had a tough act to follow. Regardless, there's no bar-raising here; they keep it firmly on the ground, surrounded by all the predictable comforts we've grown accustomed to. For a game so full of horses, it is perhaps understandable that it did so little to scare them.
Whereas TLoU2 had a story that could never be easily summarised in a single sentence, Tsushima can be encapsulated thus: a samurai man does some things, because the Mongols have invaded the pretty island where he lives.
Wait. Two sentences: sometimes he gets a new hat!
And you sometimes see his bare bum.
Three sentences, then.
To say I enjoyed TLoU2 would be an understatement. It would also be inaccurate. I mean, it's the most miserable video game ever made. I don't think anybody could actually enjoy that amount of relentless anguish and anxiety. It was like being strapped into a gnarly chair, with your eyes forced open by a couple of uncomfortable metal hooks, while Twitter scrolls in front of you on a big screen.
Also: the room is full of hungry rats. And you're not wearing shoes or trousers.
It probably didn't help that I binged it in three days, by the end of which I emerged bow-legged from its unrelenting emotional pounding. That isn't a criticism; it just shows you how effective The Last of Us 2 was at making me feel stuff. In my view, there's no doubt it's one of the greatest video games ever made, its lustre dimmed only by the radicalism of bigots.
While I accept it may have driven its development team to near collapse, it doesn't so much raise the bar for the right way to achieve video game storytelling and characterisation as strap it to a rocket it and fire it into the moon.
Tsushima, therefore, had a tough act to follow. Regardless, there's no bar-raising here; they keep it firmly on the ground, surrounded by all the predictable comforts we've grown accustomed to. For a game so full of horses, it is perhaps understandable that it did so little to scare them.
Whereas TLoU2 had a story that could never be easily summarised in a single sentence, Tsushima can be encapsulated thus: a samurai man does some things, because the Mongols have invaded the pretty island where he lives.
Wait. Two sentences: sometimes he gets a new hat!
And you sometimes see his bare bum.
Three sentences, then.
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